Evac
by IWasFound
Summary: The virus has newly hit the West side of America. The country is in confusion, and no one is sure where the helicopters are whisking their loved ones off to. This tells the story of Nick, Rochelle, Coach and Ellis's fight to reach the hotel in time, and how they end up together as a team. Not insanely gory or anything, but I'm rating M for swears.


**Authors Note: Hey there, so it's been like two/three years since I've posted anything but now I'm back indefinitely with this little ditty. Basically, it has a lot of hints to the game and in-game dialogue, but ignores an awful lot of the canon of the survivors, so it won't fit in with the creators stories. Heads up. For example, in this Rochelle still works for a news team, but only behind camera, whereas in canon, she was broadcasting that day. Ok, just thought I'd let you know because people are picky.**

Nick

It was smack bang in the middle of Hicksville. It smelt of damp and plastic with an overriding scent of talcum powder. All of the curtains and bed sheets were a depressing, faded yellow colour. It was full of annoying, hillbilly families with loud, hillbilly children. The food was awful and the employees were worse. But worst of all, Nick was paying for it. It wasn't cheap, either.

The hotel was Nick's idea of 'worst possible holiday location ever' - not that he was there on holiday. He had planned on staying for six days on "business", and had only two days left to go when he found himself locked in the en suite of his room with a violent, blood spattered maniac throwing himself against the door, screaming incomprehensibly. Nick's first calm thought since he had accidentally let the attacker in had been 'Savannah native' - his second, 'rabies'. The third thought was 'zombie'. What a thought that was.

Nick had been lying in bed, sleeping off a hangover, when he had awoken to the sound of raised tones and a lot of thudding. He had put it down to restless guests until the screeching sounded right outside his door. It sounded inhuman, Nick had thought maybe an animal - he wouldn't be surprised in this town.

"Hey, do you wanna try shutting up out there?" he had called to whatever was outside. "Jeez."

The noise cut off sharply at the sound of Nicks voice. Nick had felt smug at first and had sank back into his pillow but then he'd heard the growling - a low, guttural sound - followed by a resounding shriek and a series of banging on his door. This had pissed Nick off royally.

"Hey, I told you to shut it, now shut the fuck up or I'll come out and make you!" He'd called.

The screams had intensified and Nick got the impression that he was shouting at an animal. He had ripped off the covers and stormed, pissed, to the door. He'd glanced only momentarily into the peephole, saw the top of a human head and instantly pushed open the door, hitting the guy on the outside with some force. The guy had stumbled backwards for a moment, almost falling to the ground. Nick saw it properly for the first time and flinched.

It didn't have a mouth as such. Where a jaw should have been was a torn, fleshy hole that made Nick's stomach churn. It had no pupils- only dead, white eyes sunk deep in their sockets. The skin that was left intact was waxy and yellow. It looked human - but it was a human with a great big fucking question mark next to it.

It had recovered after a moment of surprise; quickly regained its balance and taken no time in launching itself at Nick, who had wrestled it off of him before bolting into the en suite and locking the door behind him, panting heavily. And now he was stuck in there.

Nick thought helplessly of the pistol that was in a bag under the bed a mere fifteen feet away. He had searched through the cupboards in the bathroom but there was nothing that he felt would be any use as a weapon. Reasoning - and threatening - the guy had failed miserably, and Nick wondered why he had even bothered trying to shout over the wails in the first place, let alone convince him to walk away. Speaking seemed to piss the guy off more, and so Nick sat and waited patiently for him to get tired and leave.

He had been sitting with his back to the door for a while now, thinking about what to do. He had panicked for a while, naturally, but now he was just pissed off. It was one thing to be stuck in a crummy hotel in the middle of Hillbilly country, but now he was also stuck sitting on a bathroom floor in next to nothing, hiding scared from some psycho freak with half a face. It was undignified, to say the least. He had to admire the guy's stamina, though.

He had almost managed to zone out from the irritating banging and screeching when he heard the sound of wood splintering. It wasn't very loud, and he couldn't be sure he had actually heard it, but the dull, instinctive twist of his stomach when he thought he heard the wood splinter was enough to assure him that, yes, the asshole was now breaking through the door.

"Well, fuck me."

Rochelle

Rochelle had only meant to stay a day or so in Savannah. Arrive Tuesday. Stay the night. Leave Wednesday. That had been the plan.

It was now Friday night and Rochelle was alone inside a broadcasting van, waiting on the crazy zombie people to eat her alive.

On Tuesday evening, her and the rest of the news team had been settling down in their rooms' after a long day of waiting around for a minute and a half report on house prices or something. Rochelle had been channel surfing. She had went to skip straight past the News channel- as had become her habit since joining the profession - when she noticed the bold, red words "Emergency Report" along the bottom of the screen. She flicked back to hear the tail end of a sentence.  
"-evacuations. These will take place between tonight and Friday at various evacuation points throughout the country. I'll repeat that: emergency evacuations to take place between tonight and Friday. Please refer to emergency services as to when and where your local evacuation point is, and viewers are reminded not to attempt to aid or communicate in any way with the sick or contaminated..."

The same night she had received a call from her boss telling her that, due to the mass flu epidemic that had managed to spread from the West to the East in mere days, she would have to cancel her flight home and be evacuated from Savannah.  
On Wednesday she had received a second call from her boss who, completely ignoring her protests, had informed Rochelle that the Savannah evacuations ended on Friday afternoon, her nearest evac. point was the roof of another hotel some two hour drive from where she was staying; made clear that she had no idea where the government were evacuating people to, how long it would be for, nor what the epidemic was, blandly wished her luck and hung up.

Fast forward 24 hours and Rochelle was being tossed about the back of a speeding news van, screaming for her colleague at the wheel of the van to 'put his foot down' and trying not to look at the slick layer of blood that was coating her jeans. When her and Frank - a balding, middle aged man that she had spoken to maybe only two or three times since meeting - had dove into the van, they had barely slammed the doors shut when tens of pairs of fists had begun slamming themselves into the sides of the van with such ferocity that the door began to dent and the windows were smashed in an instant. Frank had jumped into the front seat and sped away from their hotel, slamming into a mass of bloodied bodies that hit the windscreen one by one, each with a sickening thud or crack. They had managed to pull away from the crowds of attackers and drive away relatively smoothly. They had turned on the radio but received nothing but white noise. From the windows, they could see scenes of carnage. Initially they had planned to hit the freeway, but thought better of it.

They had travelled back roads for a while, not entirely sure of where they were going or how to reach the evac., and thanking the Gods for whoever decided to fill up the tank that afternoon. They had dared to leave the quiet back roads for only twenty minutes or so when a truck had spun on to the road from nowhere and the van had crashed straight in to it.

Rochelle had collided with the seats in front of her, various bits of tech gear falling on top of her. Following the screaming of brakes and crunch of metal-on-metal, there had been silence. Rochelle's face had been pressed to the floor of the van for quite some time before she found the courage to get up and glance to the front seat, where she had not heard Frank move nor speak since the crash.

Rochelle wished she hadn't looked. There, behind the wheel of the now-destroyed van, was a very dead Frank. She couldn't see his face from the angle he was slumped at, which was lucky for her, but she could see enough blood and bone to know that he was very much dead.

And so there she was now. Sitting with her knees pulled to her chest on the floor in the back of a ruined van, with a dead colleague in the front seat, and murderous zombie freaks outside. She could not pretend that she wasn't terrified - she definitely was.

She had sat zoned out for so long that night had come and gone again, and now the Friday morning light was pouring in the cracks of the windows, glistening on the blood that was spattered more or less everywhere. Rochelle was thinking long and hard about just giving up - sitting there in the back of the van until either she died of dehydration or was found by zombies and eaten alive.  
Zombies! Mother. Fucking. Zombies. The realisation hit her and a small, disbelieving breath escaped her that resembled a laugh, but didn't quite contain the humour. She wanted to call her parents but she had no phone. She wanted to leave the van but didn't dare to yet.

It was then, when she was sitting contemplating her new life inside the van, when the loud roar of rotor blades passed overhead. The sound was huge, and Rochelle flinched when she felt the van tremble. She got on to her knees and chanced a look out the windscreen - still refusing to look at poor Frank. - and saw two helicopters heading for what must be the evac. hotel.

"OK...OK…" Rochelle tried to steel herself for the craziest thing she was ever about to do. "I'm not going to die here. I'm not going to die in the back of a news van." She picked herself slowly up from the floor and scanned as much as she could of the surrounding area through the windscreen. She fumbled for a moment on the floor and found the baseball bat that she had picked up somewhere back at her hotel. It was smudged with the same sickly red that was all over her clothes. She tightened her grip on the handle.

Tentatively, her fingers reached for the door handle and she slowly pulled back the van door. The movement was as gentle as possible but to her the soft whirring of the door sounded like a chainsaw.

There were no zombies around that she could see. She stepped cautiously out of the van and set her sights on where the choppers had gone. She only had a few hours.

"Better get a move on." She said to herself, and with a deep breath she set off.

Coach

"I don't know what to do. They're telling us we got to get on this helicopter, but they won't say where we're going, they won't say when we'll be back. All they're giving us is this "confidential, need-to-know basis" crap. I don't know. I just don't know."

"Baby, I think you better do as they say." Coach replied soothingly.

"What about you? The whole god damn country can't be going to the one place. What if we can't get a hold of you? People are saying they don't allow cell phones where we're going. Can you make it down? We're supposed to be leaving tomorrow afternoon but we could see if they'd let us stay a day longer, or get the next one or whatever. Wait until you got here..."

"Kathy, I think you better-" he said. He could hear her shouting to one of the kids in the background. "Kathy?" She still couldn't hear him. "Katherine? Hello?"

"Sorry, I'm back. They're hyper. I don't feel right leaving without you. Can't you just come down?" She pleaded. Coach felt a pang in his chest. He had almost caved in and picked up the keys, told them to stay put until he got there, but he had pulled himself together.

"Have you seen the News? Cars piled up for miles and miles on the freeway, baby, I wouldn't make it half way. I don't like it either, but they're saying this Green Flu thing is dangerous. You and the young 'uns get on the helicopter. I'll come find you later, alright? Don't worry about it, I'll find you!"

That conversation had taken place two days ago. Katherine had taken the kids to South Carolina for a few days. Coach had meant to go with them, but half his colleagues had called in sick, and he hadn't been able to get the time off work. The 'Green Flu' virus had hit a day or two later, and by the end of the week the whole country had gone crazy. Attacks, evacuations, military soldiers all over the place. That was the last time Coach would be able to convince Katherine to go away without him.

Every time Coach had went to leave, he would look around his home and think of everything he was leaving behind. He had a feeling this was not going to be over quickly. And he knew that it might be some time before he saw his family again, despite what he had told Katherine on the phone.

She hadn't called again, so Coach assumed they had taken her cell phone. He guessed they'd have some sort of record to show where they were so he could track them down later.

Coach had been preparing to leave again when there had been a knock at the door. He had answered to find a military soldier, heavily armored. The soldier had asked him if he was aware that he was required to report for evacuation. Coach had said yes. The soldier had asked him if he had attempted in the past three days to make his way to the evacuation point. Coach had said no. The soldier had then told him that he would have to go with him now, to be immediately taken to the evacuation point. Coach had told him exactly what he thought of his 'evacuation'.

Coach ended up going with the soldier, but he made very clear that he wasn't happy about it. He had grabbed his wallet and was escorted to the army vehicle waiting outside. He hadn't expected to find a fortified army jeep sitting in his quiet, suburban street but he pretended not to be impressed. There was second soldier in the passenger seat. Coach thought that he only looked about eighteen or nineteen- a 'rookie'.

He had been drilled in the vehicle. Name. Age. Health. Occupation. Encounters with the sick and contaminated. Then, they had fallen into silence.

They were nearing the evacuation point when the jeep slowed to a stop. On the road in front of them, there was a car, and at first Coach couldn't see why they had stopped, however after a moment, movement could be seen from inside. The Rookie turned to the other soldier.

"Should we stop?"

The soldier looked uncomfortable. "We're not supposed to."

"We gonna leave them?" The Rookie said again. His tone was mostly the flat, professional one that soldiers always donned when on duty, but the minute crack in his voice gave away his guilt. Soldier 2 bit his lip but eventually said "wait here."

Soldier 2 slammed the door shut and Coach watched him walk up to the door. Coach saw his hand raise to his walkie talkie just as the Rookie's own walkie talkie crackled incomprehensibly. That was when Soldier 2 raised his gun, aimed it in the window and fired two bullets.

Coach scrambled to unbuckle himself, yelling as he did. The Rookie turned and tried to tell him to sit down but Coach was deaf to him. He felt sick. Soldier 2 was still investigating the car.

"Sir, please sit down." the Rookie was pleading with him "Sir. I'm going to have to ask you to remain calm. Sir...Sir, please…" Coach couldn't get the buckles off of him but he strained against them, still screaming as though Soldier 2 could hear him. The Rookie was clearly beginning to panic. His eyes flickered to his gun, as though considering shooting him to shut him up.

"It was a zombie!" he eventually yelled. "It wasn't a real person anymore, he was better off shooting it! He couldn't save them, they can't _be_ saved so just-" the Rookie stopped dead. "Just sit down, Sir." He whimpered. Coach faltered. The Rookie's eyes were wide, as he realised he had just disobeyed a massive order.

"Don't tell anybody I told you that." he whispered, horrified. His professional tone was gone, and now Coach could see only a scared young man.

"What do you mean "zombie"?" Coach asked.

"I can't tell you," the Rookie said, no longer looking at him. "Confidential."

"What is it some sorta code word? You can't really mean zombies like, _zombie_-zombies..." Coach pressed. The Rookie remained silent, staring out the window. Coach wondered what Soldier 2 could be looking at for so long. Coach continued, still feeling sick.

"Now you listen, boy. I am dragged from my own home to be forced to go somewhere I don't even know about. I am strapped into the back of your goddamn truck like a goddamn criminal and right now, I just witnessed that there soldier kill whoever was in that car. Kill them. Dead. Now you're telling me I don't deserve a goddamn explanation 'cause it's 'confidential'? You better explain to me what the hell is going on, or I will find whoever it is you report to and I will tell them exactly what you just told me, and I will-"

"Alright, shhh!" The Rookie said, panicked. "The virus going around turns people crazy. We call the infected ones zombies. That's all I can say."

"What do you mean 'crazy'?"

"I can't _tell_ you! It's big. I mean real big. They find out I told you anything, I get shot, alright? I'm not playing. I could get killed. And they haven't even given me many details. They're only letting me get involved 'cause they're desperate. The Green Flu turns people crazy, then they attack people, then the person they attack gets infected, then _they_ turn crazy and now, the whole world's crazy. And we don't know how to fix 'em yet, so we have to shoot 'em. Now, promise me you won't tell anyone I told you this. No one. Not your evac. guy, not your friends, not that guy out there, alright? Promise me."

"I'll keep my mouth closed. Last question: where they taking us?"

"I don't know." The Rookie said. He turned back around, drained by his rant. Coach decided not to push him any further. He was surprised to get anything out of a soldier at all. He sat back in his seat. The Rookie pressed a button on his walkie talkie.

"One coming up behind you," he said.

Soldier 2 turned to look. He aimed his gun for a moment before lowering it and replying.

"Heh. He's a big guy."

"Just shoot him."

"Nah, really. Come look."

"What about him?" The Rookie said, ignoring the fact that "him" was sittingin the back seat.

"He won't move, just come see. Honestly. He's huge!"

The Rookie turned to Coach, and told him to sit tight. The Rookie grabbed his gun, got out the Jeep and jogged over to where Soldier 2 was standing. Coach tried to unfasten the belt around him.

"Why couldn't they just have used a normal…?" Coach muttered to himself. The buckles held fast - one across his waist and then two over his shoulders- like on a rollercoaster. The one that held the two straps across his shoulders finally clicked open but the one around his waist would not undo, no matter how much he struggled with it.

He gave up, and turned to look at the two soldiers, who were laughing at the overweight zombie. Disgusted, Coach shook his head. That was when the thing threw it's head forward and projectile vomited over the soldiers from feet away. The soldiers jumped back and tried to wipe the disgusting goo from their uniforms, and fired a few blind shots through the gunk that was coating their goggles. One of the stray shots hit the belly of the thing and it exploded with a bang, guts and gore flying though the air like streamers, splashing to the ground.

Coach was frozen. He couldn't come to grips with what had just happened. There was a roar, and the soldiers whipped round to face the van again, guns steady but still blinded. Coach's hands found their way to the buckles again and he frantically pulled at them once more. The soldiers began to run back to the jeep when they stopped dead in their tracks, looking at something behind the jeep that Coach couldn't see. They began firing, but in only seconds, tens of people began rushing past the Jeep. Coach heard them screeching and felt them clambering over the top of the car. They ran straight for the soldiers, frantically flailing their fists.

The crazed people surrounded the soldiers. They were firing shot after shot but it wasn't long until they were overcome. Coach lost sight of them, but he could still hear screaming and screeching of the attackers.

He looked away. He couldn't bear to look, and he couldn't get out the belt. Even if he could, what was he supposed to do to help? Coach sat there, with his eyes shut and his hands over his ears for some time. When he took his hands from his ears again, there was silence. He traced the edge of the belt once more and when he reached his side there was a soft 'click' and the belt loosened. He closed his eyes again. Talk about timing. He looked out of the windscreen and the attackers had gone. He was glad they hadn't spotted him in the back of the car. He opened the back door tentatively and looked out. Nothing there.

He took a few steps towards where the soldiers had been. He saw what looked vaguely like a uniform and looked away again. A gun would be a useful thing to have, he thought. He forced himself to walk over to the place where they had been. He only knew that they were the bodies of the soldiers because of the two guns lying beside them.

He picked one up, balking at the mess that covered them. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and wiped it down as much as he could.

He looked about to try and figure out where he was. He saw what he thought was the top of the hotel in the distance. Far, but still in sight. He guessed that if he moved quickly, he could be there in under an hour. He glanced at his watch. He had better hope he could get there in under an hour, because that was all he had left.

Ellis

"Stick this on." Keith hauled a large piece of metal tubing to where Ellis lay, already welding a sizeable metal plate to the door of a battered pick up truck.

"Keith, this thing won't be able to move if we put much more weight on. It don't even

look like a truck no more…"

"Course it don't look like a truck. Cause it's a _zombie truck_. We jus' invented it

now, so course it aint gonna look like your standard pick up, see? Think about it!"

"Yeah, but Keith," Ellis sat up, wiping the sweat from his forehead "We can't just go

stickin' parts on that ain't supposed ta be there. It'll weigh it down too much."

"Fine, El, have it your way. But there ain't no way we'll get this truck 100% zombie

proof if we don't change it up a little bit. We gotta...gotta…_reinforce_ it. Like armor!"

Ellis stood up and looked at the masterpiece he and Keith had built. Ellis imagined it

looked a lot more impressive to Keith than it did to him - secretly, all he saw was a mangled heap of scrap metal stuck onto the body of a beat up, old truck, but he smiled enthusiastically as Keith clapped his shoulder.

"Good work, El." Keith said proudly. He looked at the metal tubing Ellis had refused. "I

suppose 99% zombie proof ain't so bad..."

Keith

Keith tapped his fingers nervously on the wheel of the truck. It sure did move pretty

slowly with all the extra metal on it. Ellis sat beside him in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the dark trees that lined the quiet road on either side of them. Not a trace of concern on the guy's face. Keith looked back to the road, grasping for the beer in the cupholder with his free hand. He whistled a tune to himself. He didn't want Ellis to think he was more scared than he was.

They hadn't encountered any zombies on the way so far. Keith had seen them before,

though. Creepy looking motherfuckers. Big holes in their face, and yelling and screeching like some sort of animal. Kind of reminded Keith of foxes. He had almost shit himself first time he had ever heard a fox screeching. He supposed the zombies were worse, though.

First time Keith had seen the zombies was at the garage that same night. He was

there with Dave and Paul, and a bunch of Paul's friends who were all assholes, when one of them pulled up the shutters, and there was two of them shuffling about outside. The sound of the shutters must have pissed them off, 'cause they had both ran at Paul's friend and tried to beat the shit out of him. At first, they'd thought they were just drunks, but once they got a better look at them, they saw that they were actually zombies, so Dave hit one of them over the head with a bottle, and then one of the assholes decided to shoot both fuckers in the head.

"That's what you gotta do," the asshole had said "that's what they do in the movies."

"This ain't a fucking movie," Dave had shouted at him "zombies aren't fucking real!"

That was when a whole bunch of them showed up. Paul said he reckons they heard the

shots go off and came running. They had pulled the shutters closed and hid inside until it sounded like they had gone. They had all decided they wanted to leave at that point, but Keith told them: "Nah, Ellis said he was on his way. We oughta wait 'till he gets here." but then they had heard the guy on the radio talking about evacuation points, and the bastards had gone out the back door and left in Paul's truck.

Keith had waited on Ellis. It had been fucking scary sitting in the garage by himself.

'Cause the light flickers on and off sometimes, and there weren't much noise, but then he'd hear something outside and shit himself 'cause he thought the zombies were coming to get him. He was real worried for a while that the zombies had gotten Ellis on his way there, cause El's Mom's house was only about ten minutes away but Ellis had taken twenty, plus the fact that Ellis was an idiot and would probably try and strike up a conversation with it or whatever, but Ellis had shown up eventually and that was when they had started building the zombie truck.

Bet Dave was eating his words right about now. Keith wondered if they had gotten to

the evac. okay. He hadn't heard from any of them since they bailed. Keith was pretty pissed at them. They should've had the decency to wait on Ellis. He didn't expect Paul's friends to care much about El. Paul probably would have stayed except he acts like an ass when his friends are around. But he had expected Dave to stick around. He had thought Dave and El were pretty good buddies. He supposed he was just scared or something. Couldn't blame the bastard. Except he could, 'cause Keith was pretty scared too, but he still had the decency to-

Ellis let out a low whistle, which made Keith jump, snapping out of his little reverie. He

let the truck sidle to a stop, and squinted at the road ahead.

In the middle of the road ahead was a gathering of, what Keith guessed, was zombies.

He could tell 'cause they were all pushing and shoving at one another to get to whatever was lying in the road. Probably a dead person, Keith thought.

"Should we run 'em over?" Ellis said, brow furrowing.

Keith would have said yes, but he hadn't gotten his head around the idea that they

weren't humans anymore. To him it just felt like running over a bunch of people.

"I don' think I can." Keith said. Ellis nodded thoughtfully. Keith was sitting wondering

what the hell they were going to do when a distressed wail was heard from behind them.

Keith and Ellis looked at one another for a moment in confusion, before Ellis nodded to

behind Keith. They atred into the darkness, and could make out the form of a semi-naked woman, tall and pale, who drifted in and out of view as she made her way through the trees. Her face was buried in her hands and her shoulders shook with sobbing. She passed by the truck without even taking notice of it, and emerged from the woods feet away. The two men stared dumbly at her for a few seconds longer before Keith registered with alarm that she was about to walk straight into the group of hungry zombies. Ellis must have clocked this at the same moment, as he scrambled for his door handle just as Keith did the same.

"Hey, lady!" Ellis yelled "Careful you're gonna-!" Ellis clapped a hand over his mouth.

He had shouted too loudly, and caught the attention of the zombies in the road, which had ignored them up until that point. The woman didn't respond as the zombies growled and fixed their eyes on Ellis and Keith.

"_Lady!_" Keith whispered viciously to the woman. "_Lady!"_

The woman stopped, her hands still clamped over her face, and her howling sobs still

filled the air. Her back was turned to them and she made no other acknowledgement that they were there.

"Keith…" Ellis whispered, his eyes stretched and unblinkingly fixed on the zombies,

who had turned back to the meat on the road.

"Ellis, we gotta get back in the truck." Keith whispered.

"What about her?" Ellis whispered back, "Maybe she's deaf or somethin', maybe she

can't hear us. What if she can't hear them neither?" Ellis looked helplessly at the woman.

"Ellis, let's just get in the truck." Keith whispered. His bravery was about spent for

the day.

But, as usual, Ellis was an idiot. He turned his head slowly to look at Keith. Keith could

see his brain working.

"No." He whispered. "No, Ellis, she'll come to us, just get back in the truck...Ellis...Ellis!"

Ellis crept slowly towards the woman. He continued to whisper: "Ma'am?...Hey lady...".

Keith watched him, his heart pounding in his shirt. 'He's an idiot,' he thought 'A fucking moron'. The seconds stretched out as he waited for the horde to notice Ellis again. When Ellis reached about ten feet from the woman, she raised her head. The wails cut short and a silence rang out. Ellis stretched out a hand to put on her shoulder. Suddenly, she started growling. A low rumbling that rose and rose until it became a distressed, contained, mewling as though she were fighting to keep the noise from coming from her. She lowered her hands from her face, and Keith saw from where he was standing that they were abnormally long for a human. Actually, they looked more like long, pointed claws than fingers. Something clicked in his mind.

"Ellis," He kept his voice low but he could feel the panic rising. "Ellis, come back to the

truck."

Ellis had spotted her hands and had stopped just a few feet short of her.

"Ellis." Keith wasn't whispering any more. She was bordering a screech now. "Ellis,

come. Here. _Now!"_

Two things happened at once: Ellis turned and bolted just as the woman let out a

hellish, bone-chilling scream. The second she turned around Keith could see she was not the poor, lost woman they had thought she was. She was a monster. She ran at Ellis, who was back to the truck and throwing himself inside in seconds. Keith slammed the door shut and pushed down the locks as She reached the car. She was screaming as her horrible eyes burned unbearably cold into Keiths. She raised her claws and tore into the truck. There was the shriek of her claws ripping through the metal and, to add to the struggle, the horde at the end of the road had decided that Keith and Ellis were, in fact, better prey than whatever was ground into the dirt.

The horde was on them in seconds, their yells adding to the cacophony. They tore at

the truck relentlessly, they managed to rip off some of the "reinforcements", and had started denting the doors as Keith tried desperately to start up the old engine. It spluttered into life after a painfully long few seconds and Keith pressed down on the acceleration as hard as he could. The truck moved away slowly, unable to make an escape due to the sheer weight of the excess metal and the number of zombies on the roof of the car.

The last of the metal plates was ripped from the side of car, and they managed to get a

little more speed. A claw tore its way through Ellis's door, leaving a ragged hole. He jumped almost into Keith's lap to avoid it. Ellis kicked open his door in a blind panic, forcing the Crying Lady and a few zombies to stagger backwards.

Keith threw the car into reverse and lurched back, throwing some bodies from the roof.

Then, he rammed forward again, pushing through the zombies who were regathering themselves from their fall. Tires screeching, they sped off down the road, wincing as they bumped over whatever the zombies had been chewing on earlier.

"Next time," Keith said, struggling to calm his heart rate. "We make it 100% zombie proof."

**Authors other note: Wahey! Wasn't that fun? I don't know if there'll be another chapter, putting that out there now. Maybe there will, maybe there won't. I only tend to read/write fanfiction when I have severe, hindering writers block or for creative prompts or whatever, so my fanfics are scarce to say the least (as I mentioned, I wrote one chapter two years ago and this is the first one since) but this was fun, so maybe I'll keep it up. Lordy knows my own novel isn't going anywhere any time soon. Also, weirdly enough, Nicks part was the funnest to write but it was like half the length of the other character's. Hope you enjoyed!**


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